THE ROLE OF ISLAMIC MICROFINANCE IN WOMEN EMPOWERMENT AND ENTREPRENUERIAL DEVELOPMENT: A QUALITATIVE CASE STUDY ON AKHUWAT ISLAMIC MICRO FINANCE

Abstract

Women empowerment has always been an important concern for developing countries. Micro finance projects in developing countries are majorly aimed at empowering women and developing them as entrepreneurs especially those countries where women have lower socio-cultural and financial backgrounds such as Pakistan. as Islamic microfinance has become more prominent loanees prefer taking interest free loans as they are shariah complaint and follow the teachings of religion, now IMF has become socially approved tool to facilitate women entrepreneurial development and women empowerment. However very little research has been done on how Islamic microfinance impacts the empowerment of women and their entrepreneurial growth using lived experiences particularly in qualitative settings. Majority of the available research focused on conventional micro finance and only few studies focused on the entrepreneurial development on women entrepreneurs. This case study research focuses on examining how Islamic micro finance subjectively empowers women and develops them as entrepreneurs based on Akhuwat Islamic Microfinance. Primary data was collected through 12 structured interview questions and data was collection from women beneficiaries of Akhuwat Islamic Microfinance who were in their loan recovery phase. Data was collected from 3 AIM branches using purposive sampling. Data was analyzed using NVivo and themes & codes were generated to conduct thematic analysis. The study showed that Islamic microfinance played a positive role in financial empowerment due to enhancement of income stability and opportunities of women to contribute more in household costs. The results related to social empowerment like confidence and household recognition was gradual and determined by family support and cultural norms. Moreover, the entrepreneurial development turned out to be one of the major ways of empowerment especially when women had control over the use of loans. This research contributes to the limited literature available on IMF in context of Pakistan and offered practical suggestions that policy makers and other microfinance institutions can implement to develop women-based, Shariah-compliant, empowerment initiatives. The research was only restricted to the Pakistani women borrowers of Akhuwat Islamic Microfinance; hence, the results cannot be wholly extrapolated to different settings. The study can be replicated in other areas or even the models of Islamic and conventional microfinance can be compared in future research